BBC presenter Jeremy Vine sobbed in court today as he described being targeted by the ‘Jimmy Savile of trolls’ while testifying against a YouTube host accused of stalking him.
The broadcaster said I was being harassed by the ‘dangerous’ Alex Belfield, who has more than 372,000 subscribers to the video-sharing platform, ‘as if I was caught with a fishhook in the face and my flesh ripped apart’.
Prosecutors allege Belfield, 42, subjected Vine to a “ruthless” online campaign that involved a “wave of personal and obnoxious attacks” on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook over an 11-month period.
“This was definitely Olympic-level stalking,” Vine said.
Belfield also allegedly encouraged his supporters to make fake calls to Vine’s Channel 5 TV and BBC Radio 2 shows, accusing Vine of appointing his ’10-year-old daughter’ as director of one of his companies in an attempt to dodge. pay taxes, and tried to get private phone numbers for his relatives.
Belfield denies stalking the 57-year-old, and seven about alleged victims, and claims he is the subject of a ‘witch hunt’.
But Vine told Nottingham Crown Court how he received an “avalanche of hate” from other internet users thanks to Belfield’s videos and tweets, and had to put cameras in his house because he feared one of the YouTuber’s “disciples” might have a knife or acid would launch attack on him or his family.
He told the court: ‘We are dealing with serious crime here. This is no ordinary troll. This is the Jimmy Savile of trolling. Any reference to him makes my flesh shudder. All he does is lie.’
Jeremy Vine (left) has started giving testimony in the trial of former BBC Radio Leeds presenter Alex Belfield (right). They are both in the photo outside the court today
The court heard Vine even had to hang a picture of Belfield in his hallway and warn his 13-year-old daughter to be wary while she was out on the street — causing her to burst into tears.
Vine, dressed in a navy suit and tie, often looked at Belfield from the witness stand while describing him as a “nasty, nasty man” whose actions, he said, were “crazy and evil.”
He said he had never heard of Belfield, himself a former BBC radio host, until April 2020 when an acquaintance sent him a link to a video on YouTube featuring a ‘tirade’ about him – and Belfield concluded: ‘This man really p***** me off.’
Vine said in retrospect that he “wish he hadn’t seen it,” adding, “Watching this man is like swimming in sewage.”
Jurors were told there was a ‘constant bombardment’ of videos, tweets and messages, with Belfield becoming increasingly abusive.
Vine said at the hearing, “I can see he really doesn’t like me personally, and I don’t know why, because I’ve never had anything to do with this man.
“This is starting to worry me more and more because it’s clearly Alex versus Jeremy and he has an agenda, and I’m wondering if I’m starting to have a problem here.”
He added that in one period, Belfield made 124 references to him in his online content in just 14 days – and began falsely alleging that Vine had ‘stolen’ £1,000 from license money payers to spend on a memorial to radio director John Myers , who died at age 60.
Vine collapsed after telling jurors how that accusation, which he described as a “complete lie,” led a troll to post an online tribute he posted to his father, who died of Parkinson’s disease.
He said, ‘His comment was, ‘What would your father have said if he had known his son was a thief? I couldn’t handle it. I went to the police and said I couldn’t take it anymore.’
Vine added that Belfield, of Mapperley, Nottingham, escalated the bullying from ‘week to week’ to ‘day to day’, claiming: ‘He operates through persistence and repetition.
‘I could not sleep. You are working on that 24/7.’
The court was shown a series of videos by Belfield about Vine, in which he repeatedly referred to the missing £1,000 and described him as a ‘c***’, a ‘hypocritical p****’, saying that he ‘ blood on his hands over the Covid-19 pandemic.
Belfield takes a selfie outside Nottingham Crown Court before a previous court appearance
Vine sometimes shook his head during the footage and said, “I have two daughters, they are now 18 and 15. My daughter Anna was 13 when this happened.
“I had to sit down with her and her sister and tell them about the situation.
“I said this man hates me, he has accused me of theft, he has driven so much hatred towards me, so we will have to be careful.
“We had a picture of him in our hallway. We thought it was possible that one of his half-million followers would have a knife or acid or something.
“Imagine telling that to a 13-year-old? She was in tears, I saw her shrink. It took a year before she had the confidence to leave the house again.
“She’s his victim too and he doesn’t even know her name.”
“There’s a lot of stalking in broadcasting, but none of my friends in the industry have seen anything like it.
“This is Olympic-level stalking.”
Vine described the impact Belfield’s alleged campaign had on him, saying it left him “shredded”.
He added: ‘It caused an unbelievable hatred for me. I had 5,000 to 10,000 hateful personal tweets as a direct result of Belfield.
“He just kept going. I was nervous. I couldn’t eat or sleep for a while.
“I felt hurt and felt there was absolutely no escape.
“I had a physical stalker following me. That was a picnic compared to this man. His videos are still online. In 1,000 years my great-grandchildren will see stories of how I stole 1,000 pounds, and I can’t help it.”
Vine said the abuse didn’t end until police began investigating Belfield, and his bail conditions meant he couldn’t make any more videos about him.
He added: “That gave me and the others a year where we just remembered what it was like ‘BB’ – before Belfield.”
The process continues.